Manitoba, Winnipeg to be exact. Gateway to the west. Icebox city. Winterpeg. The land of four seasons - Winter, Mosquotoes, Potholes and Road Construction. At least this isn't in a bible belt.

The reason I don't capitalize bible is because I don't believe it deserving of a capital. It would deserve a capital if it was named Iron Age Fiction.

(06-09-2010 07:29 PM)Sunshine Wrote:

(06-09-2010 03:48 PM)No J. Wrote: If a christian gets a tattoo it is a sin because cuttings and markings of the flesh are not allowed.

Hi and thx for the welcome! Yes, I know. He says he laughs inside when he tattoos a cross or Jesus, whatever, on someone. When he has mentioned it they always have some excuse or justification.

Of course. Without the lame excuses and justifications, they would be forced by reason and logic to become.... OH NO! Atheists!!!!!!!!

(06-09-2010 08:10 PM)athnostic Wrote: [quote]

Everyone has the talent to make music! Usually people just lack opportunity. It's never too late to start.

I don't agree with this statement. Replace 'everyone' with 'most people' and I will toyally agree. I have had students that I have done everything I can think of to help them make any type of progress to no avail. There are a small number of people who just don't connect with making music. Could it be my skills as a teacher? Hard to say. I have been told many times that I am an excellent teacher and I have not had anyone say anything contrary to that. Maybe there are a few that I am not capable of reaching? I can't answer that unless I have a few samples of teachers who can reach every student, or I have students who I could not reach who were taught by other teachers and there results could be compared against my results.
Until then, my experience indicates that there are a few that won't be able to learn to play.

Hey everyone!
(I made a new thread introducing myself but I though I should also post here)

New to this forum. Just a little background about myself:

I was raised as a fundamentalist 7th Day Adventist. As I got older I started moving away from the conservative wing of the church towards a more liberal, progressive wing. (For info about SDA you can PM me). I started to question my beliefs in the SDA church and the teachings of the prophetess Ellen G. White. I rejected her teachings completely, and her claim as a divine prophet, but I was still an Adventist. After studying my particular faith (and taking courses in college in comparative world religions) I rejected all of the church doctrines all felt I could no longer call myself an Adventist, however I still felt like I needed to believe in something and I still believed in God. I turned to Judaism and was studying with a rabbi to convert. About 3/4 through my study I could not come to terms with the belief in God, I considered myself and Agnostic and finally became a "full fledged" atheist about a year ago.

This is only the condensed version of course.

P.S. The podcast Reasonable Doubts also helped me in my journey away from religion. They have a blog: http://www.doubtreligion.blogspot.com Two of them are actually professors at my college and I have taken their classes. They're really great!

A bit about myself.
Up until I was in year 8 of high school, the thought of god had never entered my mind. I would have been about 12 or 13 when all the students in the school were divided up, placed into rooms with total strangers, who then started questioning us about god. When the question of "where we came from" was asked, I put my hand up and said "my parents had sex and my dads sperm entered my mums egg I came out a baby" Everybody laughed, including the Christians. The Christian said that is not what he meant. One then asked: where did the first man and woman come from. I had little knowledge of evolution also but at that time I thought we came from monkeys, so I said "we come from monkeys", everybody laughed louder. And so did the Christians.

They asked everybody to settle down and listen, because they had a story to tell us. And so the indoctrination began.

For me, after about 365 x 12 = 4380 days of having zero contemplation of god to suddenly have been ask to believe these stories was unbelievable. After the class, one of my friends asked me if I believed in god. I said no, and what the Christians said was the biggest load of B*LL SH*T I had ever heard in my life. My friend then told me I was an Atheist. I asked what an Atheist was and he explained it to me. He said an atheist is somebody who doesn't believe in god. I asked him if he believed in god. He said "yes". He then said "There is a god but you just don't believe in him". I found this insulting. I looked up the word Atheist in the dictionary and found that it came from Greek. 'A' meaning no. 'theist' meaning god. I agreed NO GOD. For me atheism has always meant 'NO GOD'. It had nothing to do with belief. It was a fact.

Recently while surfing the net, I found an atheist web site and thought I'd enter for a bit of fun to see what was happening. But I was shocked by the stance they took. Their position was not absolute. They had blended 'science' with atheism and said there is no credible evidence for the existence of god. They did not believe in god but they also did not deny gods existence. Suddenly I was thrust back to that day at school. And I fought them over the meaning of the word Atheist. They mockingly asked me if I knew what a dictionary was and they told me to look the word up. At first I didn't, but later I did. And yes, the dictionary mentioned the word "believe", much to my regret. I have since been banned from their web site.

Rather than cause any more disturbances on the internet I have decided not discuss the topic but rather ask a question:
What does atheism mean? I want to poll the question. for example:

What does atheism mean?
1.I don't believe in god because there is no credible evidence for his existence.
2.There is no god, there never has been, there never will be.
3.God? never heard of it, I'm of the the pub, bye, have a nice day.
4.....your suggestions?

I'm not looking for a right or wrong answer, I'm just wondering what does atheism mean to you. If you have any answers that are different from the above please tell me. But I want to limit the number of answers to about 3 to 5 maximum. But more if necessary. Also if you have a better way of framing the question please include that also.

If I can get over 1000 responses I'll post it on Wikipedia or you-tube.

A bit about myself.
Up until I was in year 8 of high school, the thought of god had never entered my mind. I would have been about 12 or 13 when all the students in the school were divided up, placed into rooms with total strangers, who then started questioning us about god. When the question of "where we came from" was asked, I put my hand up and said "my parents had sex and my dads sperm entered my mums egg I came out a baby" Everybody laughed, including the Christians. The Christian said that is not what he meant. One then asked: where did the first man and woman come from. I had little knowledge of evolution also but at that time I thought we came from monkeys, so I said "we come from monkeys", everybody laughed louder. And so did the Christians.

They asked everybody to settle down and listen, because they had a story to tell us. And so the indoctrination began.

For me, after about 365 x 12 = 4380 days of having zero contemplation of god to suddenly have been ask to believe these stories was unbelievable. After the class, one of my friends asked me if I believed in god. I said no, and what the Christians said was the biggest load of B*LL SH*T I had ever heard in my life. My friend then told me I was an Atheist. I asked what an Atheist was and he explained it to me. He said an atheist is somebody who doesn't believe in god. I asked him if he believed in god. He said "yes". He then said "There is a god but you just don't believe in him". I found this insulting. I looked up the word Atheist in the dictionary and found that it came from Greek. 'A' meaning no. 'theist' meaning god. I agreed NO GOD. For me atheism has always meant 'NO GOD'. It had nothing to do with belief. It was a fact.

Recently while surfing the net, I found an atheist web site and thought I'd enter for a bit of fun to see what was happening. But I was shocked by the stance they took. Their position was not absolute. They had blended 'science' with atheism and said there is no credible evidence for the existence of god. They did not believe in god but they also did not deny gods existence. Suddenly I was thrust back to that day at school. And I fought them over the meaning of the word Atheist. They mockingly asked me if I knew what a dictionary was and they told me to look the word up. At first I didn't, but later I did. And yes, the dictionary mentioned the word "believe", much to my regret. I have since been banned from their web site.

Rather than cause any more disturbances on the internet I have decided not discuss the topic but rather ask a question:
What does atheism mean? I want to poll the question. for example:

What does atheism mean?
1.I don't believe in god because there is no credible evidence for his existence.
2.There is no god, there never has been, there never will be.
3.God? never heard of it, I'm of the the pub, bye, have a nice day.
4.....your suggestions?

I'm not looking for a right or wrong answer, I'm just wondering what does atheism mean to you. If you have any answers that are different from the above please tell me. But I want to limit the number of answers to about 3 to 5 maximum. But more if necessary. Also if you have a better way of framing the question please include that also.

If I can get over 1000 responses I'll post it on Wikipedia or you-tube.

Thanks for listening.

You pose an interesting question. First off....welcome. We don't ban people here unless they are spamming. Whether the other members of the forum agree with you or not, or whether they like you or not, or even if they are offended by you, you will be hard pressed to get banned. We also don't close threads when the origional poster is satisfied with the rsponse, so there won't be any limit to the responses you get, and no guarantees that your thread will even stay on topic. (Long live the evolution of discussion!)

That all being said, I am gong to ask that you re-post your questions in a more appropriate subject forum. (I'd suggest "Atheism and Theism"). I'll leave it here until you have a chance to write an introduction if you wish. Thanks a ton, and again, welcome!

My name's Steven, I live in Florida and I was raised Southern Baptist my whole life. I was baptized by choice when I was about 10 years old, and I went to a Christian private school for 8 years. I became a full-fledged atheist probably about three or four months ago, and before then I was an agnostic ever since I left my private school.

While I was in that school, I remember being taught THEIR version of science and history, and remember constantly having this nagging feeling that I was a skeptic at heart. Whenever a teacher would mention something about how god did this or god did that in relation to science, I would always have this feeling deep in my conscience saying...prove it. In my English class during my final semester, I was asked to write a paper where I was allowed to suggest one improvement that I believe should be made to the school.

I now realize how utterly ironic my suggestion was. It was, simply, that evolution and creationism should both be taught, and that students should be allowed to choose which one is true. I acknowledged that this was indeed a Christian school, and that no matter what they would demand creationism to be taught. Creationism is what they taught in my science classes. However, any mention of evolution in these text books simply amounted to "it's nonsense" and whatnot. I simply felt like I was being protected from the idea of evolution, rather than being taught.

So, it's ironic that my suggestion almost completely mirrors what many creationists believe should happen in PUBLIC schools, but it was directed in the completely opposite direction. I wanted to see a fair share of my science class to be given to teaching what evolution actually is instead of immediately spouting hatred towards it as if it's the most horrible thing on earth.

Years later, I've found out that they were so shocked at my paper that they sent a copy to my mother to bring it to her attention.

By the time I left there and went to college, I was officially an agnostic. I no longer believed that the Biblical account of creation could ever be taken literally by a normal, sane, intelligent person. I have taken creationist science classes. It was an experience that I now think is rare among atheists. I have fully suffered through entire semesters of complete nonsense and still came out of it with my brain cells intact.

What pushed me over the edge into atheism was that I suddenly became morbidly upset at the idea of a God existing. Of a hell existing, for anyone. After months of deep inner theological dispute which I never discussed with anyone, I came to the conclusion that the idea of a god of some kind sending people to an eternal torture forever simply because they were born in a country where christianity has no exposure whatsoever and all attempts at conversion are blockaded, is far worse than anything hitler or any other evil figure on earth has ever done. Then, I realized the bible is just as bad and not even in an afterlife sense, but in the sense that god commands ruthless murdering and slaughter, and condones slavery and mysogynistic behavior toward women etc. etc.

My sudden irrational animosity toward religion of all kinds became an eagerness to learn more about the opposition toward religion. What I found deeply comforted me. Hitchens, Dawkins, and youtube all helped me discover the world that atheists live in, and it made me feel exhilarated. So exhilarated that I now jump at any chance to have a friendly debate with someone over religion.

Sorry, I know my message is long but I suppose all of my messages on this topic have been, ever since I became an atheist. Suddenly I'm much more outspoken about my thoughts and it feels like true freedom.